Who's in control of the Baseball Stats ?

[Steve D]

The Elias Sports Bureau is the official stat keeper for MLB. Since MLB did not make RBIs an "Official" statistic until 1920, Elias does not include any pre-1920 RBIs in their "official" count.

Baseball-reference.com, and maybe some others have gone back and tabulated the pre-1920 years to count RBIs. That is why they count Babe Ruth and Cap Anson among the players who reached 2,000 RBIs. Elias and MLB however, continue to keep their heads in the sand, and ignore pre-1920 RBIs.

Steve

[Mike D.]

I read that Babe Ruth's pre-1920 RBI's weren't counted because he was a pitcher in those years.

That's obviously not true, but I did get a chuckle out of the fact that a major regional newspaper apparently is saving some dough on fact checking.

[the 'stache]

My first instinct was that Ruth wasn't included because, technically, his career began in the dead ball era. But even if that were a consideration (it shouldn't be), and you excluded the Bambino's pre-1919 ribbies (111 per BBR), that leaves him with 2,103 from opening day of the '19 season going forward.

So, who the hell knows.